Simple famous quotes

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.
-- A. Bartlett Giamatti

#Simple #Lust #Mind

The test of a good letter is a very simple one. If one seems to hear the other person talking as one reads, it is a good letter.
-- A. C. Benson

#Simple #Talking #Letters

You have to remember that I was a bright but simple fellow from Canada who seldom, if ever, met another writer, and then only a so-called literary type that occasionally sold a story and meanwhile worked in an office for a living.
-- A. E. van Vogt

#Simple #Office #Stories

I believe it was the great ogre philosopher Gary who observed that complexity is, generally speaking, an illusion of conscious desire. All things exist in as simple a form as necessity dictates. When a thing is labeled 'complex,' that's just a roundabout way of saying you're not observant enough to understand it.
-- A. Lee Martinez

#Believe #Simple #Desire

One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily, and loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight, and people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted, unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers, unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea, and work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying, and play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling, and the clocks will stop, and no one will wonder or care or notice, and people will smile without reason, even in winter, even in the rain.
-- A. S. J. Tessimond

#Rain #Winter #Simple

Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
-- Aaron Copland

#Simple #Musical #Born

A simple yet profound way to create a healthy body, a stress-free mind, and a peaceful sense of well-being.
-- Aaron Hoopes

#Stress #Simple #Profound

The business of making a photograph may be said in simple terms to consist of three elements: the objective world (whose permanent condition is change and disorder), the sheet of paper on which the picture will be realized, and the experience which brings them together.
-- Aaron Siskind

#Photography #Simple #Together

It must be a balance in everything we do, not too much of everything, keep it simple, not complicated.
-- Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

#Simple #Balance #Too Much

A successful film is a good film, and a non-successful film is a bad film. It's as simple as that.
-- Abhishek Bachchan

#Successful #Simple #Film

Be modest, humble, simple. Control your anger.
-- Abraham Cahan

#Humble #Simple #Modest

Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel

#Simple #World #Common

It struck me that our history is contained in the home we live in, that we are shaped by the ability of these simple structures to resist being defiled
-- Achmat Dangor

#Home #Simple #Structure

Made with Pencils is grounded in the creativity of a few, propelled by the financial support of many, and most importantly, it's empowering generations to come. A simple idea, a heartfelt desire, and a world of possibility. A pencil, a promise, and a dream.
-- Adam Braun

#Dream #Creativity #Simple

The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else's fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors, that any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on your not yet having spoken English loudly enough.
-- Adam Gopnik

#Distance #Believe #Simple

In Chekhov, when people leave, a carriage is taking them away forever. The stakes are so high just for someone to make a simple exit. And now we have all this access to public transportation, automobiles and jets and the Internet; we're so easily distracted, but the world is still designed to destroy you. It just happens quicker and faster now.
-- Adam Rapp

#Simple #People #Forever

In theory, cars are fairly simple. If they don't start, it's either the fuel system or the electrical system. Teach yourself about the path of each in your engine and tracing it is fairly straightforward. But at the beginning, mastering each new system seems like an unreachable shore. The car is effectively a black box.
-- Adam Savage

#Simple #Car #Black

In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
-- Adam Smith

#Philosophy #Simple #People

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.
-- Adam Smith

#Stupid #Exercise #Simple

It is my plan to create a city that is direct and simple... To leave out all that is ugly, to eliminate the unnecessary, and to give Florida and the nation a resort city as perfect as study and ideals can make it.
-- Addison Mizner

#Simple #Florida #Cities

Nationalist Socialist Germany wants peace because of its fundamental convictions. And it wants peace also owing to the realization of the simple primitive fact that no war would be likely essentially to alter the distress in Europe. The principal effect of every war is to destroy the flower of the nation. Germany needs peace and desires peace!
-- Adolf Hitler

#War #Flower #Simple

A corollary is that, when laws are out of touch with the people, those laws can and should be changed - from the most simple local regulations to the highest law of the land, our federal Constitution.
-- Adrian Cronauer

#Simple #Law #Land

All the things I thought I was - simple and plain and sometime funny - are very small words. They do not begin to describe me. They do not begin to express what is inside of me. I have value, and I have worth. I cannot be replaced like old shoes or taken for granted like tap water.
-- Adriana Trigiani

#Taken #Simple #Shoes

In the end it’s all very simple. Either we give ourselves to Silence or we don’t.
-- Adyashanti

#Simple #Giving #Silence

Right now you can allow yourself to experience a very simple sense of not knowing - not knowing what or who you are, not knowing what this moment is, not knowing anything. If you give yourself this gift of not knowing and you follow it, a vast spaciousness and mysterious openness dawns within you. Relaxing into not knowing is almost like surrendering into a big, comfortable chair; you just fall into a field of possibility.
-- Adyashanti

#Fall #Simple #Knowing

There is a very Simple Secret to being happy. Just let go of your 'demand' on this moment. Any time you have a demand on the moment to give you something or remove something, there is suffering. You're Arguing with 'What Is' - Your demands keep you chained to the 'dream-state' of the conditioned mind. The desire to 'control'... is, ultimately, our unwillingness to just be awake.
-- Adyashanti

#Letting Go #Dream #Simple

Deep down, everything boils down ("au fond tout se ramène", Fr.) to the following simple question; Do we really want justice and the realization in this world of higher principles, or else do we want to serve selfish, short-sighted (à courte vue", Fr.) interests, which, when all is said and done, are also prejudicial (or detrimental, or harmful) to those very same that pursue them?
-- African Spir

#Selfish #Simple #Justice

A man, engaged in his simple reflections in everyday life, will comprehend neither the possibility, nor the benefits of self-sacrifice, but, when given ("qu'on lui donne", Fr.) a great cause to defend, and he will find only natural to sacrifice oneself for it.
-- African Spir

#Sacrifice #Reflection #Simple

To every problem, there is a most simple solution.
-- Agatha Christie

#Simple #Problem #Solutions

Who are you? You don't belong to the police?' 'I am better than the police,' said Poirot. He said it without conscious arrogance. It was, to him, a simple statement of fact.
-- Agatha Christie

#Simple #Police #Arrogance

I wanted to have a good relationship. One that's romantic and dramatic, like in the movies. But I finally became a woman at 17 and learned that men aren't really that simple.
-- Ai Yazawa

#Simple #Men #Good Relationship

I don't care if I'm loved back, I still want to love someone.�Someone, from the bottom of my heart...�Straightforward, unwavering...�It seems like such a simple thing, so then why....�...Must it be so incredibly hard?
-- Ai Yazawa

#Heart #Simple #Care

Nothing in or of this world measures up to the simple pleasure of experiencing the presence of God.
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer

#Simple #World #Pleasure

While she cut the mushrooms, she cried more than she had at the grave, the most so far, because she found the saddest thing of all to be the simple truth of her capacity to move on.
-- Aimee Bender

#Moving #Cutting #Simple

Keep it simple, when you get too complex you forget the obvious.
-- Al McGuire

#Sports #Simple #Forget

When a really new product comes along, it's almost always a mistake to hang a well-known name on it. The reason is obvious. A well-known name got well-known because it stood for something. It occupies a position in the prospect's mind. A really well-known name sits on the top rung of a sharply defined ladder. The new product, if it's going to be successful, is going to require a new name. New ladder, new name. It's as simple as that.
-- Al Ries

#Mistake #Successful #Simple

Be sincere. Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.
-- Al Smith

#Believe #Simple #Men

I am surprised to see that today everything that does not amount to surrender pure and simple to generalized capitalism, let us call it thus, is considered to be archaic or old-fashioned, as though in a way there existed no other definition of what it means to be modern than, quite simply, to be at all times caught in the dominant forms of the moment.
-- Alain Badiou

#Mean #Simple #Today

The art of the novel, however, has fallen into such a state of stagnation - a lassitude acknowledged and discussed by the whole of critical opinion - that it is hard to imagine such an art can survive for long without some radical change. To many, the solution seems simple enough: such a change being impossible, the art of the novel is dying.
-- Alain Robbe-Grillet

#Change #Art #Simple

I still don't like the word agnostic. It's too fancy. I'm simply not a believer. But, as simple as this notion is, it confuses some people. Someone wrote a Wikipedia entry about me, identifying me as an atheist because I'd said in a book I wrote that I wasn't a believer. I guess in a world uncomfortable with uncertainty, an unbeliever must be an atheist, and possibly an infidel. This gets us back to that most pressing of human questions: why do people worry so much about other people's holding beliefs other than their own?
-- Alan Alda

#Atheist #Book #Simple

Abundance is not a number or acquisition. It is the simple recognition of enoughness.
-- Alan Cohen

#Simple #Numbers #Acquisition

A powerful tool in the early stages of developing scenarios is to pretend the interface is magic. If your persona has goals and the product has magical powers to meet them, how simple could the interaction be? This kind of thinking is useful to help designers look outside the box.
-- Alan Cooper

#Powerful #Simple #Thinking

Keep it simple: In general, interfaces should use simple geometric forms, minimal contours, and a restricted color palette comprised primarily of less-saturated or neutral colors balanced with a few high contrast accent colors that emphasize important information. Typography should not vary widely in an interface.
-- Alan Cooper

#Simple #Color #Simplicity

Can anything match that first fine discovery of the telephone and all it stood for? That first realization that, contained within ten simple digits, lay the infinitely possible? Out there ... lay six billion ears, all the people in the world available for contact and mystery and insult, unable to resist the beckoning of one small and villainous forefinger.
-- Alan Coren

#Simple #Discovery #People

There's a very simple reason for focusing on the nuclear issue. Many, many issues are of supreme importance in one way or another, but if we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, no other issue is really going to matter. Quite possibly there would be no other human beings left to be concerned about anything else.
-- Alan Cranston

#Blow #Simple #Issues

For most people, the question why be good - as distinguished from merely law abiding - is a simple one. Because God commands it, because the Bible requires it, because good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell.
-- Alan Dershowitz

#Simple #Law #People

When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside. It isn't like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there's a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.
-- Alan Garner

#Writing #Simple #World

Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
-- Alan Kay

#Simple #Simplicity #Should

Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.
-- Alan Moore

#Lying #Simple #Men

The difference between being an actor and a director is simple. The director has to hide his panic; the actor doesn't.
-- Alan Rickman

#Simple #Differences #Directors

Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture. Reasonable - that is, human - men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life.
-- Alan Watts

#War #Fighting #Simple

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
-- Alan Watts

#Life #Inspiring #Simple

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
-- Alan Watts

#Simple #Meaning Of Life #Alive

Zen is really extraordinarily simple as long as one doesn't try to be cute about it or beat around the bush! Zen is simply the sensation and the clear understanding ... that there is behind the multiplicity of events and creatures in this universe simply one energy -- and it appears as you, and everything is it. The practice of Zen is to understand that one energy so as to "feel it in your bones.
-- Alan Watts

#Cute #Simple #Practice

All of us humans have myriad other species to thank. Without them, we couldn't exist. It's that simple, and we can't afford to ignore them, anymore than I can afford to neglect my precious wife--nor the sweet mother Earth that births and holds us all. Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be.
-- Alan Weisman

#Mother #Sweet #Simple

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
-- Albert Camus

#Art #Work #Simple

Yes, everything is simple. It's people who complicate things.
-- Albert Camus

#Simple #People

The main thing is that everything become simple, easy enough for a child to understand.
-- Albert Camus

#Children #Simple #Easy

Simple music is the hardest music to play and blues is simple music.
-- Albert Collins

#Simple #Play #Music Is

The important things are always simple.
-- Albert Einstein

#Wisdom #Simple #Important

My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born, and that is all that is necessary.
-- Albert Einstein

#Simple #Facts #Life Is

I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple
-- Albert Einstein

#Beautiful #Science #Simple

I became more and more convinced that even nature could be understood as a relatively simple mathematical structure.
-- Albert Einstein

#Simple #Structure #Mathematical

The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.
-- Albert Einstein

#Simple #Law #Patterns

I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. The tree outside is life... The whole of nature is life... The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can't grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.
-- Albert Einstein

#Simple #Cells #Law

I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of a sudden a thought occurred to me: "If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight." I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.
-- Albert Einstein

#Fall #Simple #Office

I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
-- Albert Einstein

#Inspirational #Believe #Simple

I am not a genius, I am just curious. I ask many questions. and when the answer is simple, then God is answering.
-- Albert Einstein

#Simple #Simplicity #Genius

I know very well that many scientists consider dowsing as they do astrology, as a type of ancient superstition. According to my conviction this is, unjustified. The dowsing rod is a simple instrument which shows the uncanny reaction of the human nervous system to certain factors which are unknown to us at this time.
-- Albert Einstein

#Simple #Astrology #Superstitions

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
-- Albert Schweitzer

#Wise #Time #Simple

Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

#Life #Clever #Simple

If I go out into nature, into the unknown, to the fringes of knowledge, everything seems mixed up and contradictory, illogical, and incoherent. This is what research does; it smooths out contradictions and makes things simple, logical, and coherent.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

#Knowledge #Simple #Doe

I adopt a very simple approach. I observe and reflect real life and ordinary people and sooner or later that raises a laugh.
-- Alberto Sordi

#Real #Simple #People

There is no bad day that can’t be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet. This is just truth, plain and simple.
-- Aldous Huxley

#Bad Day #Simple #Listening

The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.
-- Aldous Huxley

#Art #Philosophy #Simple

The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio - rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and newmown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discord - a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig's dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began. The final blast of thyme died away; there was a round of applause; the lights went up.
-- Aldous Huxley

#Simple #Light #Pigs

Even though New York may be a more inspiring city, I get more inspired thinking of L.A., in a way. My life there was so much more simple in mind, and quiet.
-- Aleksa Palladino

#New York #Simple #Thinking

Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art-and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations.
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#Art #Mean #Simple

You fish, swim, eat, laze around, and everyone's so friendly. It's such simple stuff, but... If i could stop the world and restart life, put the clock back, i think I'd restart it like this. For everyone.
-- Alex Garland

#Simple #Thinking #Swim

I like to make an image that is so simple you can't avoid it, and so complicated you can't figure it out.
-- Alex Katz

#Simple #Complicated #Figures

The only way to thrive is to innovate. It's that simple.
-- Alex Tabarrok

#Simple #Way #Thrive

I think Maje typifies that French vibe where it's simple items that are very practical, very wearable but also, like, incredibly chic and expensive-looking.
-- Alexa Chung

#Simple #Thinking #Chic

When asked, -How is that you pick better moves than your opponents?, I responded: I'm very glad you asked me that, because, as it happens, there is a very simple answer. I think up my own moves, and I make my opponent think up his
-- Alexander Alekhine

#Moving #Simple #Thinking

I have travelled around the globe. I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes, the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all!
-- Alexander Graham Bell

#Simple #Scotland #Capes

It is astonishing that so simple a truth should ever have had an adversary; and it is one among a multitude of proofs, how apt a spirit of ill-informed jealousy, or of too great abstraction and refinement is to lead men astray from the plainest paths of reason and conviction.
-- Alexander Hamilton

#Simple #Men #Path

It seems to me that you are solving a problem which goes beyond the limits of physiology in too simple a way. Physiology has realized its problem with fortitude, breaking man down into endless actions and counteractions and reducing him to a crossing, a vortex of reflex acts. Let it now permit sociology to restore him as a whole. Sociology will wrest man from the anatomical theatre and return him to history.
-- Alexander Herzen

#Simple #Men #Theatre

I can remember a case where Capablanca worked out an impressive combination, but then chose to make a simple move in answer to which his opponent resigned at once!
-- Alexander Kotov

#Moving #Simple #Answers

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in Basic Color Terms demonstrate exhaustively and empirically, the very simple thesis that anywhere in the world, as a language develops and acquires names for color, the colors always enter in the same order. The most primitive are black and white. Then red. Then either green or yellow.
-- Alexander Theroux

#Black And White #Simple #Names

I tend to like the most basic pieces with the perfect fit and fabric, like a simple tank.
-- Alexander Wang

#Simple #Perfect #Tanks

Life isn't complicated. It's very simple, really. It's us who make it complicated.
-- Alexandra Potter

#Simple #Complicated

There is no recipe for good layout, what must be maintained is a feeling of change and contrast. A layout man should be simple with good photographs. He should perform acrobatics when the pictures are bad.
-- Alexey Brodovitch

#Simple #Men #Feelings

It matters not how simple the food - a chop, steak or a plain boiled or roast joint, but let it be of good quality and properly cooked, and everyone who partakes of it will enjoy it.
-- Alexis Soyer

#Simple #Simplicity #Quality

A simple rule in dealing with those who are hard to get along with is to remember that this person is striving to assert his superiority; and you must deal with him from that point of view.
-- Alfred Adler

#Simple #Views #People

Tis true among fields and woods I sing, Aloof from cities--that my poor strains Were born, like the simple flowers you bring, In English meadows and English lanes.
-- Alfred Austin

#Flower #Simple #Cities

Mere numbers cannot bring out ... the intimate essence of the experiment. This conviction comes naturally when one watches a subject at work. ... What things can happen! What reflections, what remarks, what feelings, or, on the other hand, what blind automatism, what absence of ideas! ... The experimenter judges what may be going on in [the subject's] mind, and certainly feels difficulty in expressing all the oscillations of a thought in a simple, brutal number, which can have only a deceptive precision. How, in fact, could it sum up what would need several pages of description!
-- Alfred Binet

#Reflection #Simple #Hands

For God to explain a trial would be to destroy its purpose, calling forth simple faith and implicit obedience.
-- Alfred Edersheim

#Simple #Would Be #Purpose

We cannot understand the meaning of many trials; God does not explain them. To explain a trial would be to destroy its object, which is that of calling forth simple faith and implicit obedience. If we knew why the Lord sent us this or that trial, it would thereby cease to be a trial either of faith or of patience.
-- Alfred Edersheim

#Simple #Doe #Would Be

My style hasn't changed much in all these sixty years. I still use, most of the time, existing light and try not to push people around. I have to be as much a diplomat as a photographer. People don't often take me seriously because I carry so little equipment and make so little fuss... I never carried a lot of equipment. My motto has always been, "Keep it simple".
-- Alfred Eisenstaedt

#Photography #Simple #Light

Some of our most exquisite murders have been domestic, performed with tenderness in simple, homey places like the kitchen table.
-- Alfred Hitchcock

#Simple #Kitchen #Tables

A simple maiden in her flower, Is worth a hundred coats of arms.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson

#Women #Flower #Simple